N Korea sets leadership summit date. The Guardian
Kim Jong-il expected to anoint son Kim Jong-un as successor at first Workers' party gathering for three decades
North Korea will hold its much-anticipated Workers' party convention next week, the secretive nation's biggest political meeting in 30 years, state media said today.
The Pyongyang gathering is being watched closely for signs that North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, has anointed a son to succeed him and will formally reveal the plan by appointing his heir to top party posts.
Party delegates will meet on 28 September to elect new party leaders, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch from Pyongyang. The report did not explain why the meeting, initially set for "early September", had been postponed.
Delegates were appointed "against the background of a high-pitched drive for effecting a new great revolutionary surge now under way on all fronts for building a thriving nation with the historic conference", KCNA said.
The conference is the first major Workers' party gathering since the landmark 1980 congress where a young Kim Jong-il made his political debut, an appearance seen as confirmation that he would eventually succeed his father, North Korea founder, Kim Il-sung.
Kim Jong-il took over in 1994 when his father died of heart failure in what was communism's first hereditary transfer of power. Now 68, and reportedly in poor health two years after suffering a stroke, Kim is believed to be setting in motion a plan to tap a son to take the Kim dynasty into a third generation.
Little is known about the son widely believed to be his father's favourite. Kim Jong-un, said to be in his late 20s, has never been mentioned in state media, and there are no reliable photos.
South Korean intelligence officers believe Pyongyang has launched a propaganda campaign promoting the son, including songs and poems praising the junior Kim. North Korean soldiers and workers reportedly pledged allegiance to the son on his birthday in January.
North Korea's state propaganda machine has been churning out commentaries calling for loyalty to the Kim family, an apparent effort to set the stage for a smooth power transition.
It's not known what party position Kim Jong-un might be granted during the conference in what would be his first publicly known official job. Delegates are expected to elect new party leaders to fill spots left vacant for years.
The announcement comes weeks after North Korea had been expected to hold the conference but was struggling to cope with devastating floods and a deadly typhoon.
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korea-leadership-workers-party